CIEE Alumnus Concludes Tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Russia

After more than five years in President Barack Obama’s administration and two years in his current position, CIEE alumnus Michael McFaul will end his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation today. A longtime Russia scholar, Ambassador McFaul is known for spearheading a “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations, and for his role in devising the New Start nuclear arms control treaty, which was widely viewed as the first significant overhaul of nuclear disarmament policy since the Cold War.

Throughout his life, Ambassador McFaul has passionately supported international exchange, believing that it plays a pivotal role in academic and professional development. He cites his own career path as proof, the beginnings of which were laid in 1983 during his first trip abroad as a student on CIEE’s study abroad program to St. Petersburg (Leningrad at the time). Thirty years later, Ambassador McFaul remains connected to the CIEE community. In March 2013, he shared his study abroad experience during a discussion with students and staff from CIEE’s Study Center in St. Petersburg and local Russian students at the European University at St. Petersburg. Watch a video of the talk.

In 1985, Ambassador McFaul returned to Russia as a language student at the Pushkin Institute sponsored by the American Councils for Teachers of Russian (ACTR), today known as American Councils, and in 1990 as a Fulbright scholar at the Moscow State University. “These experiences changed my life and set me on a career path which eventually took me to the White House in January 2009 as a special assistant to the president for Russian and Eurasia affairs,” Ambassador McFaul remarked in a June 20, 2013 blog post. “Three years later, I returned to Moscow, this time not as an exchange student, but as the U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation. I am deeply grateful to CIEE, ACTR, and Fulbright for helping me get to where I am today.”

In one of his final duties, Ambassador McFaul led the U.S. presidential delegation to the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, on February 7. He and fellow delegates showed their support for the Americans competing in the Games by attending the Opening Ceremony and meeting with athletes prior to competitions.

Read an exit interview with New Republic magazine in which Ambassador McFaul reflects on his service over the past two years here.